Do you believe in the power of prayer?

Question

If you do, how do you pray? What miraculous or ordinary answers to prayer did you get? Did you receive some 'no' answers? How did you deal with them? Did you get a 'yes' but years later? Share with us, please?

Answer 1

Yes I believe in the power of prayer. I'm a Muslim so I pray 5 times a day at set times towards Makkah. I haven't recieved any answers that I know of yet. Aside from ALLAH has protected my husband's family like I asked him to.

Answer 2

Absolutely without a doubt. My Mother had hodgkins disease, breast cancer, bone cancer, and skin cancer, and God healed all of them through the power of prayer, and I thank him for that because she could have been taken home at a really bad time in my life that could have sent me into a tailspin. I've seen God heal addictions through the power of prayer, I've seen God heal relationships through the power of prayer...A mistake a lot of people make is they think they can just say God I pray for a red sports car, and when they don't get one dropped out of the sky the next day for them, then there is no God. Prayer is real, God is real, and he loves us all very much. He just wants to talk to you, he wants to take all your worries and burdens and put them on his own shoulders....and the way for this to happen is through prayer. Then faith comes in...you have to have faith that God knows what you need, and what you should do (and he does). Honestly I have never gotten a yes or no answer, I have just observed over a long period of time the way prayer works...it doesn't always get answered how you think. The closest I have ever came was just recently, Friday actually. My mother died in October (a peacful death) and I miss her a great deal, and I am comforted by the fact that I will see her again one day, I cried out in pain to God about it, not in anger, just in missing her. That evening my Father had put a silly little valentine I made for her with a little letter she had written about me when I was 8, that she had kept (i'm 24). God reminded me with that letter that I will always have her, and she will always be a part of me, and I will one day see her again...I can't wait...

Answer 3

yes, I got a miraculous answer while in the hopsital over night my blood count went sky high and the doctors said there was no way it would come down over-night and I prayed earnestly to God and I knew he was going to answer my prayer and the next day sure enough it came down and even they said it had to be God, because it was just to big of being anything but a Miracle from God. The power of positive thinking added to prayer can chage alot of things in a person's life. I know that for a FACT!!

Answer 4

Absolutely, I believe in the power of prayer. I pray on my knees, I pray while i drive the car, i pray while i do my work... sometimes it is conversational, and sometimes it is in quiet time.

Instead of calling emergency crews when I knew my husbands plane had crashed, I called my praying friends and the kids hit thier knees too, while my oldest and i started driving around the fields where he was last, before the engine quit. His plane was destroyed, and he was not hurt at all... not a single scratch... (see link for a pic of the plane) we never did call emergency crews... God gave us peace about it thru the prayers and delivered DH from the accident.

I think 'no' is often the answer when our desires are selfish and not God's will for us.. (new car, win lottery, and so on ) I deal with the 'no' by knowing that God loves me and has a perfect plan for my life... sometimes the 'no' i thought I got was a 'wait for the right time'

God's timing is so different than our own... I think of Sarah waiting til she was in her 90s to have a child... of the israelites when they wandered in the wilderness for 40 years before God showed them the promised land.

God bless... may your prayers bring you into close relationship with the Lord

†

Answer 5

Oh yes, prayer is awesome.
I pray many many times a day. In my car while driving, home and every other place I am at..
I have been praying for something in particular for the past 9 years and am now watching Gods answer unfold right before my eyes. Its called Faith.. I know God would answer that prayer in His time, not my time.
I have also prayed for things that God did not give me but it was for a reason He didn't give me what I prayed for.. He knows what is best for me and what I was praying for was not what He wanted for me.
He controls every aspect of my life and He is my Father in Heaven, always taking care of me and providing everything I need.. I want for nothing, I have all I need....

Answer 6

while i was praying very fervently for my father I Heard a voice.Go Rub his Feet,i went too the hospital and rubbed his feet and he opened his eyes,he had been in a a coma from a stroke for nine days had a resuscitator to make him breath and a lung infection he was out of the hospital in 3 days and lived well for 11 years.
My parents taught me how to pray, you have to listen though for the answers,It usually comes in a very quiet voice,that time it was Loud and clear.tears come to my eyes sometimes thinking about how God answered my prayer,
Gods spirit is alive and well.
I have seen other life saving supernatural miracles,But
I will never forget how this guy. telling me how he was a kidney dialysis person at the hospital and an old lady there was eaten up with cancer and had a bad kidney and every time she spoke to him she was very nice and said that God would heal her,one day he said he went in and she was gone,he asked when she had died, the nurse said she didn't die she had declared herself healed that morning and they tested and she was free of all her ailments and she went home.

Answer 7

I believe in the power of coincidence. There is no power of prayer, as can be seen with every study ever done on the subject. One rich man could pray for a raise, receive it, and attribute it to his personal deity. While the millions in developing countries praying just for the necessities of life: health, food, clean water, are not so lucky.

Answer 8

(1) Yes, if you want to understand how prayer works, there are four different levels/types explained in a short book on 'Healing' by Francis MacNutt that uses common psychological terms.

(2) Basically all our thoughts, over time and space, are connected as energy, so if you cycle positive or negative energies, you enforce or attract the same. The Christians recognize this connection in the conscience as Christ Jesus rejoining all humanity with God's divinity, but secular thinkers may use related terms, from "inner child" to "collective consciousness" to describe the connection between human and divine levels where prayer takes effect.

(3) There are different types and steps in prayer. Prayers involving healing the thoughts and memories, converting negative into positive, require meditation to analyze and identify the cause of conflict or trouble. Prayers to remove spiritual blocks or even demonic oppression require exorcism commands that are a different type (addressed not to God but to the afflicting spirit or person having the negative thought)

(4) Yes and no answers imply there is a question or request for guidance. So this is a prayer for wisdom. Whether the answer is yes or no, the prayer for wisdom and guidance is always granted, either by direct answer/inspiration or indirectly through another source providing the answer.

(5) In general it is better to pray for "preparedness" to remove obstacles preventing you from "receiving" God's grace, strength or understanding, instead of trying to will a particular outcome which may not be God's will. It is better to understand whatever is God's will instead of competing or conflicting with it, which is against God's purpose so such prayers can be ineffective.

(6) Yes, answers may come later to questions or prayers from long ago. The longest gap I remember is praying to make "everyone in the world happy" when I was in 5th grade in 1976. In 1990 at age 23 I had a spiritual revelation about how that vision was coming about. And I am still sharing that vision and ways of understanding situations to help other people to let go of perceptions that cause suffering so they can understand and be happy and secure and more free from conflict, stress or worry. I learned that making peace within ourselves and with all our personal relations "collectively" becomes a peaceful society and world, so the more I resolve conflicts and create harmony locally, the same process of restoration, healing and recovery is happening globally with all people and all institutions and nations.

(7) If you want to interview a VERY interesting friend of mine with a lot of miraculous true stories, please contact OLIVIA REINER.
She will pray to help anyone who calls. Her phone number is posted at http://www.houstonprogressive.org/nothanku.html

The most amazing stories I quote are when she applied deliverance prayer to heal a women with multiple personalities caused by demons, cured a man with a heroin addiction in 3 days without withdrawal symptoms, and a serious case of a pedophile addiction which I would like to see documented through medical research to offer a cure to prevent repeated victims of sex offenders. That case has major significance, since it could change the medical, mental health and criminal justice systems if the presence of demonic energies can be scientifically measured, documented, and proven to be removed permanently. Olivia has so many cases of people whose cancer tumors disappeared without a trace (or one case where the metastasized cancer moved from all over a woman's body to be concentrated in one mass tumor so the surgeons could remove all of it) and also cases of people whose vital signs went dead but their spirit returned and they were revived, that she is working to document testimonies from these people who received lifesaving miracles. I am more interested in the medical documentation so that spiritual treatment can be offered regularly to save people from addictions and diseases that can be cured. There is documentation in MacNutt's book on "Healing" (newer versions 2001 or later) where medical research showed the healing effect of prayer on Rheumatoid Arthritis that in some cases provided complete and permanent cure through prayer and spiritual treatment even though where is no medical cure. The author explains that the body, mind and spirit naturally heals itself, but only when this is blocked does it cause disease and addictions. So you have to identify the cause of the block in either the mind or spirit and remove that, and then you can pray for the other mental and physical medical treatments to cure the rest of the body. But you must treat all levels the mind, body and spirit, and cannot ignore healing one of the levels, either avoiding medical or spiritual treatment, because if you skip a step, you can even block prayers from working.
The book includes 12 reasons why prayers don't work, so that you don't lose faith just because it isn't working. There are reasons for that, too. See also http://www.christianhealingmin.org

Answer 9

2558 "Great is the mystery of the faith!" The Church professes this mystery in the Apostles' Creed (Part One) and celebrates it in the sacramental liturgy (Part Two), so that the life of the faithful may be conformed to Christ in the Holy Spirit to the glory of God the Father (Part Three). This mystery, then, requires that the faithful believe in it, that they celebrate it, and that they live from it in a vital and personal relationship with the living and true God. This relationship is prayer.

WHAT IS PRAYER?


For me, prayer is a surge of the heart; it is a simple look turned toward heaven, it is a cry of recognition and of love, embracing both trial and joy.1
Prayer as God's gift

2559 "Prayer is the raising of one's mind and heart to God or the requesting of good things from God."2 But when we pray, do we speak from the height of our pride and will, or "out of the depths" of a humble and contrite heart?3 He who humbles himself will be exalted;4 humility is the foundation of prayer, Only when we humbly acknowledge that "we do not know how to pray as we ought,"5 are we ready to receive freely the gift of prayer. "Man is a beggar before God."6

2560 "If you knew the gift of God!"7 The wonder of prayer is revealed beside the well where we come seeking water: there, Christ comes to meet every human being. It is he who first seeks us and asks us for a drink. Jesus thirsts; his asking arises from the depths of God's desire for us. Whether we realize it or not, prayer is the encounter of God's thirst with ours. God thirsts that we may thirst for him.8

2561 "You would have asked him, and he would have given you living water."9 Paradoxically our prayer of petition is a response to the plea of the living God: "They have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewn out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water!"10 Prayer is the response of faith to the free promise of salvation and also a response of love to the thirst of the only Son of God.11

I usually pray the Holy Rosary meditating on its mysteries
Yes I have prayers that have been answered and some I'm still waiting on

Answer 10

Only in that it has the power to bring comfort to people who believe it has meaning.